LOS ANGELES – Ex-Temple City Mayor Judy Wong got a month’s reprieve Thursday as a judge postponed sentencing the former politician for her role in a corruption scandal that brought down city government.

Wong, who resigned from the council in March nine months after her indictment, showed few signs of remorse Thursday.

“Chinese people need to realize (that) they need to stand up for themselves,” Wong said. “What happened to me doesn’t mean I’m guilty. It just means that due to the system, I had no other choice.”

Wong, who pleaded no contest in May to ten felony counts of bribery, solicitation of bribery and perjury involving a local developer, was expected to receive up to 16 months in state prison. Sentencing is now scheduled to take place on Aug. 24, officials said.

Wong, her defense attorney and a prosecutor from the District Attorney’s office agreed Thursday to postpone sentencing since Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg, who has been handling the case, was not available to preside.

Wong accepted an offer from Schnegg in May, pleading no contest to the charges involving developer Randy Wang.

The former Mayor said it was a difficult decision for her to plead no contest to the charges, brought by a county Grand Jury, rather than go to trial.

“I have no more money,” Wong, 54, said. “My bail bond expired. That’s one of the major reasons” for the no-contest plea, she said.

Wong said she also had family considerations, particularly the long-term care of her 89-year-old mother, who is an Alzheimer’s patient.

Had she gone to trial and been convicted, Wong would have faced up to 12 years, 8 months in prison.

“I’m pretty sure the truth will come out one day,” she said.

The county’s grand jury charges stemmed from the Wang’s accusations that the former councilwoman accepted about $13,000 in bribes in exchange for her support of the developer’s $75 million Temple City Piazza mall project.

Asked whether she would have done anything differently, Wong paused, and then said: “Probably not.”

She said, however, she has learned “to recognize who is your friend and who is not.”

Meanwhile, Friday’s pre-trial hearing of ex-Temple City Mayor Cathe Wilson, who was charged on felony counts of bribery and perjury involving Wang’s former project manager, will likely be postponed since Judge Schnegg is still expected to be unavailable, Los Angeles county Deputy District Attorney Sean Hassett said.

Wilson lost her re-election bid last year.

Joe Walker, a Temple City Unified School District board member that has closely followed the cases, said Thursday he hopes that Wong – whom he “supported for years” – takes “this new month of freedom before sentencing and reaches out to the community she betrayed and seeks forgiveness.”

“By saying the truth will come out, she is still being dishonest and playing us all for fools,” Walker wrote in an e-mail. “When she comes clean, admits to her acts, and asks God and the community for forgiveness, she will be amazed at how her life will change for the better.”

Councilman Vincent Yu said he was disappointed the sentencing was postponed.

“We would like to put it behind us,” he said. “The city needs to move on.”

Yu added that he did not know how the whole truth would come out, unless the facts of the case were contested in a trial.

“I would say that if someone thinks they are innocent, they should fight it,” he said.

Councilwoman Cynthia Sternquist said she, too, had been hoping Thursday for a resolution to Wong’s case.

“I think the stigma of a government that went wrong is always going to be there,” she said. “We are trying to make government transparent for our residents to the best of our ability.”

Judge Schnegg was needed in another courtroom to fill in for Supervising Judge Peter Espinoza of the Los Angeles County Superior Court’s Criminal Division, who was on vacation, said Liz Martinez of the Superior Court’s public information office. Schnegg is the assistant supervising judge for the division, she said.

Brenda Gazzar is a multilingual multimedia reporter who has worked for a variety of news outlets in California and in the Middle East since 2000. She has covered a range of issues, including breaking news, immigration, law and order, race, religion and gender issues, politics, human interest stories and education. Besides the Los Angeles Daily News and its sister papers, her work has been published by Reuters, the Denver Post, Ms. Magazine, the Jerusalem Post, USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, The Cairo Times and others. Brenda speaks Spanish, Hebrew and intermediate Arabic and is the recipient of national, state and regional awards, including a National Headliners Award and one from the Associated Press News Executives' Council. She holds a dual master's degree in Communications/Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.